NEW YORK — The conversations caught on wiretaps planted by the Turkish police are alleged to show a conspiracy to help Iran skirt US sanctions by trading gold for gas. The recordings also suggest that the plotters aimed to please one man: Recep Tayyip Erdogan, then the prime minister of Turkey, now the president. The Erdogan government has dismissed the telephone recordings as fabrications concocted in 2013 by treasonous adversaries who had infiltrated the Turkish police and judiciary. But US prosecutors have taken a different view. They have cited the 2013 Turkish investigation in court papers filed in New York where nine men — including a senior Turkish bank official — have been charged with

Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan criticized the U.S. justice system on Friday after a prominent Turkish banker was convicted of profiting by evading the sanctions on Iran, in a trial that has strained the U.S. government's relations with NATO's largest Muslim country.

The trial included testimony that alleged corruption among high-level Turkish officials, including Erdoğan, Reuters reported. Erdoğan accused the U.S. of using the trial and conviction as a means of undermining his country's economy and leadership. "If this is the U.S. understanding of justice, then the world is doomed," Erdoğan said during a news conference.

Poo Finger Terrorist Attacks Us Interests

Turkey's president vowed "to purge terrorism" across the border in Syria, as Turkish forces pounded US-backed fighters with artillery fire on Sunday. A military operation in northern Syria against the city of Afrin - controlled by the Syrian Kurdish armed group YPG - will be launched "in the days ahead", President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was quoted as saying by the official Anadolu news agency.